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On Friday, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren presented a plan to dismantle tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google by forcing them to divest some of their biggest acquisitions.
Warren cited Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp and Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods as anti-competitive mergers that it would "disapprove".
It's a bold plan, but experts tell us that it's unlikely to happen given the history of antitrust cases and the difficulty in bringing them to fruition.
Read more:Elizabeth Warren said that she wanted to dismantle major technology companies, including Amazon, Google and Facebook.
To set a precedent, Warren wrote that "America has a long tradition of disbanding companies that have become too big and too dominant". But for Harry First, NYU law professor and antitrust expert, this interpretation is debatable.
"To say that there is a long tradition in this area would be charitable," said First. "There have been some major ruptures based on antitrust violations – you have American Tobacco, you have Standard Oil, you have AT & T, but over time, not so much because it's so hard to do . "
Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, said the difficulty would likely be political: getting Democrats and Republicans to agree on the policy changes needed to bring the proposal to fruition. from Warren.
"If Congress changes antitrust laws, it might be possible [happen]but this is a remote possibility and unlikely to be a top priority for the House or Senate, "said Pachter.[It’s] about as likely as Mexico pays for the Trump Wall ".
Scott Berg, managing director and senior analyst at Needham & Company, does not see the possibility of dismantling large technology companies because of the interconnection of their products.
"A lot of the value that Google is seeing on the Google Maps platform, for example, comes from all the search data," Berg said. "So, if you're trying to separate some of these business units, you're actually going to remove a lot of the value that you give consumers."
In the past, Berg said, it would have been easier to dismantle telecoms or oil giants because their product offerings were not as integrated as today. Instead, companies could be divided simply by region, he said.
For Berg, the need to dissolve a business would also mean holding a monopoly on a given industry. For him, this is not the case of the examples of companies provided by Warren.
"Take the Amazon Web Services platform, AWS has made great progress, but Microsoft and Google are also making great progress." Said Berg. "On the Google side, yes, they have worked a lot with research, but outside of research, which of their products is the most dominant in terms of monopoly?"
As for how he thinks investors will react to the growing rumor of breaking the technology industry, Mr Berg does not think that there should be too much worry.
"It 's one of the newspapers and that day, it may have the opportunity to move the title one or two percent, but in the longer run, I think that' s the one. impact is minimal, "he said.
Friday, the main technology stocks were relatively stable.
For Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan, the problem with Warren's plan to dismantle large technologies may be summed up by his misinterpretation of Microsoft's antitrust lawsuit in his statement on Friday.
"What is the bottom line of the Microsoft case? Do not break Microsoft," said Crane. "When are you looking at what [Warren] wants to do – which is two things, break [tech companies] and turn them into public services – that's exactly the opposite of the concept of [the] Microsoft [case]. Microsoft is: Let's reduce competition by eliminating Microsoft's practices that exploited innovation. "
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